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Canadian Songwriters Propose Collective Licensing
aboivin writes "The Songwriters association of Canada has put forward a proposition for collective licensing of music for personal use. The Right to Equitable Remuneration for Music File Sharing would legalize sharing of a copy of a copyrighted musical work without motive of financial gain, for a monthly fee of $5.00 applied to all Canadian internet connections, which would be distributed to creators and rights holders. From the proposal: 'File sharing is both a revolution in music distribution and a very positive phenomenon. The volunteer efforts of millions of music fans creates a much greater choice of repertoire for consumers while allowing songs — both new and old, well known and obscure — to be heard. All that's needed to fulfill this revolution in distribution is a way for Creators and rights holders to be paid.'"
My first thought: This is like taxing the postal service to deliver copied works. How is that supposed to work?
And they *say* they'll distribute the funds, but that hasn't seemed to work in the past. Why is this going to work now? Someone needs to realize this can't work in practice.
Problem #1: There is always someone judging which band/group/artists get into the system, and who gets left out.
Problem #2: Whoever collects the money has an automatic monopoly. No competition means the monopoly can take a bigger cut of the profits.
Problem #3: This creates a problem for new or up-and-coming groups. They often get their exposure by offering their music, or samples of it, for free. Fewer people will hear them when the cost is the same as more established groups.
Rent Seeking! Everybody else does it!
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo.
The general idea is great, but implementation details matter. I doubt the average Canadian house spends $60/year on music, so the $5/month is excessive. The other thing that caught my eye was this:
Who are these mysterious people waiting in the wings that have been spying on everyone? Media Sentry? The same clowns who would tell you that 98% of all online music is "theft"? Most artists should say, loud and clear, "no thanks" unless they can trust the monitoring company to honestly report listening. The industry has that has so long given artists the shaft should be discarded. Everyone else should say, "no thanks" to having all of their internet traffic monitored.
The obvious choice between earning a living by song and dance and personal entertainment or liberty is liberty. Today they want to listen, tomorrow they will censor. The trade off is not worth while.
So who gets a share of the money? Who is legitimately a rights holder? How do you divide the money?
Currently hooked on AMP
I'd like $5/month from every internet connection in Canada too. Also I'd like a Ferrari and a Lear Jet.
It's hard to see this as anything but a blatant money-grab. Lots of us use Internet connections for reasons completely unrelated to music; why should we be forced to pay for that? What next, another $5 for the Canadian version of the MPAA, plus $2 for TV shows? Then $5 for the BSA? Another $5 for copyrighted books, and another $5 for comic books?
So, everyone pays even though only a small percentage do it? Then the Porn industry will want their $5 next, and then the Movie industry, etc.... This could get expensive REAL, I mean REAL, fast......Just sayin'......
Say Grandma has an internet connection, and uses it only for sending email. She lives on a fixed income. Why should she pay $5 a month to subsidize other people so they can get free music by violating copyright? For someone on a fixed income, another $5/mo bill is a significant hit. Maybe that's $5 she could have spent having lunch with her bridge club at IHOP.
Basically the problem is that copyright is unenforceable, and a majority of the population feels no moral compunctions about violating it. (I happen to disagree with the majority, but that battle is lost, and it's time to move on.) How exactly does it follow from these circumstances that every single member of the population should be forced to pay a subsidy?
Realistically, the music industry is going to have to shrink. Boo hoo. There's no law of nature that dictates that x% of GDP should be spent on recorded music. A hundred years ago, nobody had recorded music, and the only way you got to hear any was either (a) by making music yourself, or (b) going out to hear a band. Then there was a long period where the default way to get music was to listen to commercially produced recordings, you didn't get much choice because the distribution channels (radio and LPs) couldn't cater to the long tails, and the record companies made out like robber barons. Now we're entering a new period, where the record companies have no legitimate function, and the distribution channels can cater to the long tails. It's just a change that's dictated by technology. The good news is that even if the industry shrinks, cutting out the middleman could actually increase remuneration to artists. We don't need a tax to make that happen.
Find free books.
Why only music? Let's add movies for another $5, because they copy them as well on the internet. $10 more for TV shows (hey, pay-per-view is expensive). I heard they pirate Operating Systems, so let's add another $15 for free Windows and MacOS sharing. And they even pirate expensive CAD applications, let's add $25 for them... Soon no one will be able to afford the internet anymore, only because every creator of intellectual property wants to be subsidized instead of competing in the market.
So how is it they're going to figure out how much money to distribute to each copyright holder? I guess you could try some massive AI that sniffs all internet traffic, identifies copyrighted content, and tracks who's stuff is shared the most, but that would probably cost about $4.99/internet connection. Maybe they're just going to give all copyright holders the same amount. In that case, I think my parents have a wonderful recording of me singing when I was 5, which I should clearly be the copyright holder on. I can have it posted on my website (hosted in the US but accessible in Canada) in a minute or two. How do I tell the Canadian government where to send my check?
Ahh. You begin to understand the meaning of "socialism". By spreading the cost out among everybody, rather than just the people who use the service, you can reduce the overall cost for everybody. Kind of like how our medical system works: I'm 26 years old, and I had knee surgery in November of 2007. Before then, I'd never been in the hospital, but I'm still paying for the public health care as part of my taxes. Because I'd paid that health care in my taxes, however, my stay in the hospital for the knee surgery (ACL, Meniscus, and shaving a fracture on the underside of the patella that never healed properly) was completely free. Didn't cost me a dime. Nor did the painkillers I got (and never used after the day of the surgery).
It doesn't matter that you aren't using that functionality. By charging you a small amount of money, it reduces the overall cost for everybody else.
You do realise that Canada isn't a capitalist state, right?
Besides which, they may choose to implement it only on residential services. *shrugs* If you have a "residential" account and are using it for "business" purposes, one has to ask the question: why aren't you using a "business" account? I'm in that boat, too, btw. I have a DSL connection and a cable connection. I do all my hosting off the DSL connection, and my personal uses off the Cable connection. I still think it's a good idea.
If you believe everything you read, you'd better not read. - Japanese proverb
I would have no problem with this proposal, provided the following responsibilities were imposed:
1) Transparent accounting of disbursements; every month, the collection agency would have to show how much money was collected, and how the money was disbursed.
2) The collection agency must not favour one industry over another; copyright is copyright. It makes no difference whether the copyrighted item is a bunch of bytes representing a work of music, movie, animation, literature, source code, etc. The disbursement scheme must include all copyright rightsholders.
The problem isn't imposing a levy on Internet connections. The problem is who gets the money. The music industry would like to play itself as the only victim, and demands special treatment. However, every creator/rightsholder should be included in the disbursement formula.
There is an added assumption: if the disbursement formula cannot be made 'fair' without monitoring everyone's traffic to determine which rightsholders should receive disbursements, it is unacceptable.
eskwayrd = m^2c^4
Why the fuck should I have my internet bill go up $5 a month!? I'm not downloading that much, my parents aren't either. Very few people are, why should the rest of us pay? Anyway, 90% of the music I download is not covered by SOCAN in the first place, how do those artists get their money?
This is a stupid idea. Music is now, for all intents and purposes, free. I'm cool with that, and I've made a living of music for years. WHAT THE FUCK DID SOCAN EVER DO FOR ME BUT PAY FOR LOBBYISTS?
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
hey music industry: you're done, you're history, you're bankrupt. buh bye
hey artists: you'll get paid for concerts and advertising, nothing else. get used to it
that's the reality we are becoming
don't like it? who cares. that's what is happening anyway. go ahead and make a bunch of laws counteracting this trend. i hereby pass a law saying the sun will move in the opposite direction. same impact on reality
end of story
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
$5/month is a bargain for those who enjoy getting new music at the rate of a CD every 2 months. When I was in my 20's, I would have agreed. Today, that's a rate almost 10 times greater than what I've spent on music over the last two years.
$5/month is a great deal for music, and maybe $10/month is good for movies, $30/month should be good for TV on demand compared to cable, and then there's video games, software, radio, subscription news, audiobooks, etc.; all of which might be digitally copied.
You can make a good argument for socialism on necessities like health care, education, road maintenance, etc., etc., but it makes a lot less sense when applied to luxuries. To categorize and treat them in the same way is a mistake.
I'm 56, and I average under 5 gigabytes a month on my ADSL account. I subscribe to a legal internet radio service, which compensates artists, and actually plays real music. I do not buy or listen to, let alone download/upload the latest potty-mouthed rapper or Britney-clone-bimbo recorded with today's dynamically-over-compressed crapppy studio effects. Unauthorized downloading of today's crap is a crime against musical taste, and should be outlawed for that reason alone.
Secondly, this sets a very ugly precedent, if allowed to pass. Musical rights are like construction unions, there's a gazillion of them. The Songwriters and Recording artists are only two of them. There are also performance rights and reproduction rights and who knows what else. By the time they all get their pound of flesh, my $29.95 ADSL account will have a $15/month tax on it.
But wait, it gets better, or should I say, worse. I'm sure the movie industry will want its $15/month, as will the TV industry. and e-book publishers, and software publishers. So now we're looking at a $75/month tax on my $29.95/month ADSL account.
This money-grab must be stopped now.
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
Alright, so who do you charge $5? Are you going to charge $5 on my cell phone because I can connect to the internet? What about businesses? Do you charge per employee or per connection? I could be downloading stuff from my business connection. How about college campuses? Do you charge for each connection or for each user? Do you make the college collect the money or does the government do it?. What about libraries? Do they pay? Or how about public wi-fi - the free and the paid variety? And how do you charge for prepaid cell phoness?
What if I have two internet connections for my house - one for business and one for work. And two cell phones. Oh, and a wifi connection for when I'm at the airport. That $25/month from what I can see.
This'll never happen just because of the rules involved.
I've got one better for you
As someone who has never downloaded a song off the internet, and who buys all of my CDs
The problem with these blanket levies is that it presumes I've done something wrong. Go on the assumption I'm guilty, and I'll take that as permission to trade your &*^&* files until the cows come home.
Ripping off all of us because some of us are doing something you don't agree with is just plain fscking annoying.
If you charge me on the assumption I'm doing it, fine, I'll take that as a legal license to download whatever I like. Too bad there's not a single Canadian artist who interests me.
I don't agree with the media levy, and I sure as hell don't agree with this. It's a cash grab, and it will be applied to lame-assed Can-Con artists.
Good, you pay $10, and I'll pay $0, because I refuse to pay a levy on behalf of a bunch of kids who think it's their right to download every song known to man.
Cheers
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Since you're doing this for business, you should be paying for the business DSL package. The easiest solution is then to argue that this should not be applied to business packages since it is the home users that are the ones typically doing this.
right, because nobody downloads music at work. :-)
Currently hooked on AMP
I may be misinterpreting things here, but wouldn't this effectively socialize the Canadian recording industry? If filesharing is legal and people pay a tax to support the recording companies / artists, then that's effectively socialized music.
Now it's not unheard of for Canada to socialize media -- see the National Film Board, for instance -- but this seems rather extreme.
"...it shouldn't be applied to *all* internet connections..."
It should not be applied at all, it's similar to the CD and DVD levy that assumes everyone is a crook.
It's an interesting concept but it's not right to generalize that you know for sure that everyone (100%) of people are and always will download music off of the Internet. Having a high speed Internet connection doesn't make you a criminal.
I don't know of any other situation where all people using a service are accused of criminal activity. It would be like everyone with a telephone had to pay a fine because telephones are sometimes used for criminal purposes.
Oho. Sounds like the principle behind another well-known economic system: "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need."
Why do you assume such a guild would distribute the income fairly? Isn't it more likely that they would abuse their power over artists if we allowed them to determine where all the money goes?
Pathetic scum sucking filth.
net surcharge !solution
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
No, because you may make more use of the road systems than people who do have kids. Why should they be paying for your roads? It's much easier if everybody just pays a tax based on their total income on the "it'll all come out in the wash" basis. Plus your tax is contributing to the overall good of the country through improved public education, so it's good for you in the long run anyway.
We actually tried this during PSHCE classes (Sorry, no sources to cite here!) and gave people realistic incomes and tax rates, then asked them to work out how much tax they honestly thought they should pay. Some people reduced the amount they pay on health but increased police spending, some didn't pay as much on education but wanted better maintenance of the water infrastructure. It's a surprisingly small difference which makes it just not worth the extra overhead of you saying what you want to spend your money on and the subsequent calculations of who owes what, and how to make the budgets actually balance against what is in effect a varying tax rate for each civil service.
How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
Thank you for clarifying. That it is essential that songwriters be compensated by society for an illegal activity is an argument that I'll have to think more about. It's compelling, but I'm on the fence about it.
However, in addition to my argument about the cascade of other levies that this would likely precede (I know, I dislike slippery slope arguments too, but I can't imagine the motion picture & television industries not wanting an equivalent), I'll throw another argument against this:
By fixing the levy at $5/month, if this proposal became law, then the SAC would be defining the value that society places on music, rather than the marketplace. I believe that socialism has its place, but I don't think it's here.
You've made it pretty clear that you don't understand public goods. When CDs and albums were the only reasonable way to get music to people, they were effectively private goods.
With file sharing music can be something "which all enjoy in common in the sense that each individual's consumption of such a good leads to no subtractions from any other individual's consumption of that good...:". In other words, a public good as defined here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good
You can upload as many copies as you like and you'll still have full enjoyment of your music.
The government (i.e. all of us) already funds public libraries because its a lot cheaper (i.e. much more efficient) than everyone buying their own personal copy of a book. Public libraries are efficiency promoting institutions. This proposal is not that much different.
"by that I mean people who don't sit on slashdot all day wondering why everyone else isn't building robots" DECS
Why is it that some folks have a mental block regarding what capitalism is and what socialized endeavors are?
If your country has relatively free markets, recognition of private property and a state that mostly stays out of public ownership of enterprises then, in broad terms, it is a capitalistic one (spare me any detail about what I may have missed, I may not know exactly what a capitalist country is but I sure as hell can recognize one when I see it).
A country spousing the principles of capitalism can and often do socialize some services (because as the above post pointed out is the right thing to do from the moral and economical sense).
There are few non capitalistic countries in the world: North Korea, Cuba and in their way into capitalism Vietnam, China and sundry former Soviet republics. On the way out of Capitalism is Venezuela, only time will tell if this is a successful move or not.
To claim that Canada does not follow capitalism is inane in extreme.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.